ABSTRACT
The modern law of the tort of negligence is founded on Lord Atkin’s neighbour principle in Donoghue v Stephenson (1932). This is not to say that before that time no successful claims had been brought in negligence, but those that had succeeded tended to be only in defined categories, such as between landlord and tenant. No general principle linked the decisions which would permit the law to extend to new categories through application of principle. In Donoghue, Mrs Donoghue went to a café with a friend. The friend bought Mrs Donoghue a drink of ginger beer which was poured into a glass from an opaque bottle with a stopper. The friend made a contract for the supply of the drink with the café proprietor, who had made a contract with a supplier, who in turn had made a contract with the manufacturer. Mrs Donoghue consumed part of the drink, but, on pouring out the remainder, out slipped the decomposed remains of a snail and Mrs Donoghue became very ill with gastroenteritis. As she had made a contract with no one, and her friend, who had, had suffered no injury, Mrs Donoghue sought to make the manufacturer directly liable in negligence (the bottle was opaque and firmly stoppered, so could not have been tampered with after leaving the factory). This was a novel claim. It was held purely on the question of law as to whether a manufacturer could be made liable to the ultimate consumer with whom neither he, nor those in the chain of supply, had made a contract, that a claim could lie.
